Best Thai in any city: Lemongrass! (In Ft Lauderdale for sure!)

Thai food may be our favorite Asian cuisine. Yes, we love sushi…but that is in a different class of Asian food.

The menu, with its almost confusing mix of seafood, sushi, Thai food and an odd eclectic assortment of dishes, can be a bit daunting. The usual reaction is to ask why such a broad swath, focus on what you do best, Thai food. But everything we have ever ordered has been of very high quality and delivered with a smile.

For appetizers, Tom Yum soup was spicy, with fresh cut mushrooms and other vegetables; the spice level was enough to make you sniff, activating your sinuses but not too strong to annoy the palate. The other appetizer was one we have had several times — spices duck salad. Hardly spiced, yet the duck, lettuce and shaved carrots with a light vinegar sauce is just so good, you want it as an entree. One other appetizer that is outstanding is the tuna tartar — we have had a dozen of these in as many cities and this is the best, fresh, perfect portion, and dressed with a light sauce that brings out the tuna.

As for the entrees, the Pad Thai may be the best we have ever tasted; more often than not, restaurants get the balance of the mixture wrong — too little peanuts, too many sprouts, grisly chicken or too sticky rice noodles. At Lemongrass the balance is perfect, and perhaps the ultimate testament is that you want to save some to take home and snack on the next day. Yum.

All the wok-related dishes are categorized by sauce — ginger, garlic, etc — and you pick the protein. We chose the ginger sauce and seafood medley. Not a bold flavor affair, but delicately delicious. The seafood — scallop, shrimp, calamari, muscles — was very fresh and with the ginger, it was a mild dish, but so right if you want something tasty and well rounded between fish and ginger.

One final note — as we got the remainder of the Pad Thai to go (tomorrow’s lunch snack!) we commented on how amazing it was; the young waiter smiled and said t was his grandmothers recipe.

Great sushi, great Thai food.

#lemongrassrestaurant, #thaifood, #greatthaifood

Lemongrass, on route 1 in Ft Lauderdale, of the dozens of Thai restaurants we have eaten at, wins the prize.